I agree with most of the reasoning behind these points.
I did like the battle in XIII but I can't say I like it more than the other games.
Definitively need an awesome enemy and a real purpose to playing, XIII was terrible with that. Not only did I not care about saving...whatever I was saving, people I never saw or people that wouldn't use the emergency exit...aliens that ate people, I don't know. I understood the story but it was not motivating and the ending was extremely disappointing.
Simplicity...sure, the game that sticks out the most for being too complicated is XII, so much story, so often lost, the game makes it hard to pick up after you put it down. XIII wasn't all that complicated but there wasn't a story outside of a journal which was just as informed as you were really because it updated as you went. All it did was fill you in on the descriptions of things and the backstory...which I didn't care about, I wanted better game.
Spoilers*in case you didn't play them.
Old school setting isn't really necessary and actually didn't sit too well with me when they came out with IX even though they delivered with that, I much prefer VII, VIII, and X. This odd mix of what seems like the past to us with future like technology, technology that is isolated in its development that it is like man made magic. In VII you had mako which was similar to oil, it powered cities and cars and let you cast magic. VIII had private military, time travel, a military society with an interesting level of technology with a older look, and an isolated super advance future society that goes to space! X took you from a futuristic world that is the past lost technology in the future you time travel too. The world is traditional, religion based, but at the same time advancing in technologies in a few places. Essentially it is rather diverse while in XIII it was super tech and the uninhabited world...that has nothing and no one in it.
I missed the world map when X came along, it was something that was missing. Thankfully the game still had a lot going for it so it didn't matter so much. XIII on the other hand if it had a world map with an airship I would have flown around that and called it a game instead of what they gave us... Ok, not really but FF loses an appeal when you need to walk from place to place or they put in a quick travel feature (screw all quick travel features, create transportation systems like in Morrowind you damn Oblivion, you ruined my foot game). Losing a world map encourages the game to become more linear while having one might encourage them to make use of it like they always did with secrets, alternative routes, sidequests, sidequests, sidequest, OMFG sidequests.
Before the PS3 everyone was nice to me :(
